.xxx: porn Internet domain proposed

Which one of these Web sites is the official government-sponsored Internet site for the… Which one of these Web sites is the official government-sponsored Internet site for the White House: whitehouse.com, whitehouse.org, whitehouse.net or whitehouse.gov?

Visitors to the first three might be rudely surprised to find that they aren’t official Web sites, but instead a porn and two humor sites, respectively. But then, given the hype over whitehouse.com — which boasts more than 85 million visitors since 1997 — perhaps not.

Stuart Lawley, who started Oneview.net, a United Kingdom Internet provider, wants to clear up such confusion. He recently submitted a proposal to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers that would make .xxx a top-level domain name for Internet porn sites, so that searchers could more easily access porn, and so that porn companies that wanted to make what they sold explicitly clear could register for around a $75 fee.

The .xxx domain has been proposed and rejected before. In an odd instance of politicians and pornographers agreeing, in 2001, Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., advocated it as a means of protecting kids from the “awful, awful filth which is sometimes widespread on the Internet,” according to a March 22 news.com article.

All of this is a good business venture, but it also brings issues about free speech and the applicability of this to the Internet sex business. Porn sites would voluntarily buy the .xxx domain name, which would mean that some with famous names, like whitehouse.com, probably wouldn’t opt for the new domain name.

So the “awful, awful filth” would straddle to fence between .xxx and other domain names, which would only partially keep porn from impressionable, credit card-less children.

This would be the worst of both proposals — porn would be easier for consenting adults to find, a plus, but also for children to find. Given the glitches in some Internet filtration software — some of which bans sex education Web sites, but not porn — merely filtering out .xxx Web sites wouldn’t necessarily protect children.

And if the United States government compelled all sex-related Web sites to register at .xxx, such regulation might infringe on free speech. What, after all, constitutes sex? It’s a question neither Bill Clinton, nor most people, can answer definitively.

In fact, the American Civil Liberties Union’s head of technology and liberty program expressed concern about creating a worldwide red-light district, in which governments could relegate speech they considered offensive, but wasn’t necessarily porn.

The .xxx domain looks to be a profitable business venture for Lawley, but would lead to murky legal matters. And none of this would prevent people from stumbling onto whitehouse.com, only to wonder if Clinton were, in fact, still in office.